Oscar-Nominated Film Turns Spotlight on Indonesia

From left to right, Safit Pardede, Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in the documentary The Act of Killing. The film centers on Mr. Anwar, who vividly recounts his role in the anti-communist purges that occurred in Indonesia in 1965.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Of all the year’s Academy Award nominated films, “The Act of Killing” is one of the most startling, and it’s raising questions in Indonesia, where it is set, about how citizens and the government would respond were the film to win the prize for best documentary feature.

Directed by American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer and produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the film examines the killing and alleged torture of at least 500,000 alleged communists in Indonesia following an attempted coup in September 1965.

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General Suharto, who helped quash the coup attempt – which he blamed on Indonesia’s Communist Party and used to vilify anyone associated with it – later became president and ruled the country with an iron fist for 32 years. Suharto stepped down in 1998 and died in 2008.

The communist purge is one of the darkest but least discussed periods in Indonesian history, and “The Act of Killing” has been both praised and criticized for bringing this part of Indonesia’s past into the spotlight.

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Director Joshua Oppenheimer attends the 7th Annual Cinema Eye Honors For Nonfiction Filmmaking at Museum of the Moving Image in New York City on Jan. 8.

In July 2012, Indonesia’s official human rights body, Komnas HAM, issued a report based on interviews with hundreds of stated witnesses to the abuse that stated human rights violations had occurred in 1965 and called for an investigation into the killings.

The Attorney General’s office has not taken up the call for an investigation, citing insufficient evidence.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Oppenheimer said he hopes that the nomination, and the extra attention that it will bring to the film and to the issues of impunity it raises, will encourage – or pressure – the Indonesian government to acknowledge its role in what took place in 1965.

He also said he hopes the spotlight “will encourage Indonesians to overcome fear and to hold their leaders to account for their crimes – be they crimes against humanity, or human rights violations or graft and corruption.”

Presidential spokesman Julian Pasha told The Wall Street Journal that he respects and appreciates the film as a work of art. However, he refused to further comment on the issues raised by the film, including alleged genocide.

The film centers on Anwar Congo, a former leader of Indonesia’s politically connected paramilitary group, the Pancasila Youth. Through a combination of campy theatrics and testimony, Mr. Anwar and several others vividly recount their role in the killings.

No trial has been held and no one has ever been punished for the killings.

Mr. Pasha said neither he nor President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono have watched “The Act of Killing,” and therefore cannot comment on the film. However, upon reading some coverage of the film, he said he questions whether a story told by three sources can be taken as a portrait of 1965.

The film took seven years to make and included the help of an Indonesian crew that has remained anonymous for what the filmmakers say is fear of harassment or intimidation. It has not been released in theaters in Indonesia, in part to avoid a potential ban were it to go under review by the Indonesian censorship board. However, it has been shown locally through private screenings and is widely available online.

Mr. Oppenheimer called the nomination “a huge honor” for the filmmakers, but also a meaningful moment for the Indonesian crew as well as the survivors and the victims of the communist purge.

Anonymous/Final Cut For Real

Adi Zulkadry and Anwar Congo sit for make up on the set of The Act of Killing.

“In one way, ‘The Act of Killing’ is one component in a process of national reconciliation and recognition that is unstoppable,” he said.

However, the fact that many of those who allegedly committed the violence have held or continue to hold positions of power, has made the process of speaking out and demanding justice more difficult, Mr. Oppenheimer noted.

“You have to remember how this came about,” he said. “I was working in a community of survivors, actually helping them to make a film about why they are afraid, what it’s like for them to be living with the perpetrators still around them and in positions of power.”

Mr. Oppenheimer says he was challenged by the survivors to interview some of the alleged perpetrators to see if they would confess.

“I went and filmed these people and found that to my horror and astonishment that all of them were boastful in recounting the grisly details of the killing,” he said.

Mr. Anwar was one of them, but as “The Act of Killing” shows, he was not alone in admitting, in such a startling way, his role in the killings.

Carlos Arango de Montis/Final Cut For Real

The waterfall scene in the film, where the massacre victims come to Mr. Anwar (in black) to thank him for killing and sending them to heaven.

While the film has already received many awards and accolades, there has also been criticism – including that the film is too myopic or lacks authority since it was made by a foreigner.

Mr. Oppenheimer says each criticism merits its own response. He points out that the film was made with a team of 60 “really dedicated” Indonesians without whom it wouldn’t exist.

He also explains that he felt “entrusted” by the survivors to do a work of what he calls “historical and moral importance,” which “I did with an all Indonesian crew, in continuous dialogue with a human rights community, a community of survivors, intellectuals, artists who were my guide and insisted that the film feel authentic and fluent in Indonesian culture.”

Indonesia has changed since the 1960s and since Mr. Suharto stepped down in 1998, and Mr. Oppenheimer acknowledges this, too. That more people are talking about the film and survivors are writing their memories of the past and having them published are indications of progress.

“But the state is at a crossroads, and Indonesia is at a crossroads and that’s why the nomination is such an important moment for the survivors of the 1965 genocide and for anybody in Indonesia who cares to build lasting change,” he said.

How the Indonesian government responds to the film if it does win, he believes, will be up to the Indonesian people.

“I think that if the film wins an Oscar, it becomes less frightening for ordinary Indonesians to say, ‘We need to see this film, this film should be embraced.’”

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